Connecticut officially joins blue state alliance in effort to circumvent electoral college

In what amounts to a ploy to circumvent the U.S. Constitution while moving toward a direct democracy, Connecticut is joining a growing alliance of liberal states in a “pact” that would give its electoral votes to the presidential candidate who wins the national popular vote.

The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact consists of blue states that commit to allocating electoral votes to the national popular-vote winner, regardless of who won their individual states, Fox News reported.

(Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Connecticut’s General Assembly passed legislation to award Electoral College votes to the winner of the popular vote last week and Gov. Dannel Malloy, a Democrat, will sign the bill into law.

“The National Popular Vote Compact will ensure an equal vote for every American citizen, regardless of which state they happen to live in,” Malloy said in a statement.

“The vote of every American citizen should count equally, yet under the current system, voters from sparsely populated states are awarded significantly more power than those from states like Connecticut,” Malloy said. “This is fundamentally unfair.”

Tara Ross, a retired lawyer called the move “a clever scheme to change how we elect the president without the bother of having to pass a constitutional amendment.”

“States that approve this legislation enter a simple compact with one another,” she wrote. “Each participating state agrees to allocate its electors to the winner of the national popular vote regardless of how its own citizens voted. The compact goes into effect when states holding 270 electoral votes (enough to win the presidency) have agreed to the plan.”

With Connecticut in the fold, the pact includes 11 states and the District of Columbia, for a total of 172 electors — 98 short of the 270 mark needed to be elected president.

Ross cited Founding Father Roger Sherman, the Connecticut statesman who played an influential role at the Constitutional Convention of 1787, resulting in the bicameral structure of Congress, noting that Sherman “was one of many delegates from small states who refused to go along with the idea of a direct popular vote for the presidency.”

Sherman was not alone in expressing concerns about smaller, less populated states being neglected.

Pointing to the 2016 election, Ross said Hillary Clinton winning the popular vote justifies these concerns.

“More than 20 percent of Clinton’s 65.8 million votes came from only two states: New York and California,” she noted. “Indeed, if we remove those states from the national tally, Clinton loses by more than three 3 million votes.”

Without the restraints inherent in the Electoral College system, Clinton could have focused on California, New York and a handful of other populous blue states, passing on states like Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.

“Without the Electoral College, such states — which make up vast swaths of the electorate — could simply be ignored,” Ross wrote.

“The Electoral College discourages overreliance on a single kind of voter,” concluded the retired attorney. “That’s healthy in a country as diverse as ours. It ensures that small states and less populated parts of the country can make themselves heard. It encourages presidential candidates to build diverse coalitions.”

And having “joined an effort to subvert a constitutional institution,” Ross suggested Connecticut may not be worthy of its nickname, which is ironically the Constitution State.

Here’s a sampling of reaction from social media users who are hip to the progressive left’s shenanigans:

Very bad news: Connecticut is joining other Dem controlled states in a pact where states could allocate all its electoral votes to the candidate who wins the nationwide popular vote in presidential contests, regardless of the state’s results https://t.co/AtnKjm046i

Wow. So they are basically telling the people of their state that their vote doesn’t count if it doesn’t mesh with NY and LA. Just wow. Next will be a cost savings by not allowing small populations of people to vote at all. Just hold elections in NY and LA.

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